Typefaces exist in two constituencies: as cultural artefacts which engage a broad range of critical issues, irrespective of textual content, and also as design tools used to create documents in which the literal content of text is of primary significance to the reader. It is to address the tension between these differing demands—intellectual and functional—that the act of drawing emerges as resolution. Through Shinn’s drawing the concept is worked out generatively for the entirety of each font, the execution carrying a physical signature: the quality of the designer’s hand-eye coordination, sense of style, and, fundamentally, the manner in which meaning and function are combined in the shape of a curve.

Nick Shinn, R.G.D. was born in London, England in 1952, educated at Bedford School, and acquired a Dip.AD in Fine Art (1974) from Leeds Polytechnic, Yorkshire. He lived in Toronto from 1976 to 2009, before moving to Orangeville, 60 km north of that city. He has been a member of the Association of Registered Graphic Designers of Ontario (R.G.D.) since its inception in 1996.
During the 1980s he was an art director and creative director at a number of advertising agencies, and a partner in the environmental marketing company Earthmark from 1988 to 1990. He went digital in 1989 and started...

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